Pandemic Pedagogy: Assessing the Online Implementation of a Decolonial Curriculum

Abstract

The student protests in South Africa (2015–2017) triggered shifts in pedagogical practices, such that by 2020 many South African higher education institutions had begun to make some concrete moves towards more socially just pedagogies within teaching and learning (Quinn, 2019; Jansen, 2019). In March 2020, however, South Africa went into lockdown as a result of Covid-19, and all higher education teaching became remote and non-synchronous. This paper reports on the effects of the move to remote teaching on the implementation of a new decolonial ‘emplaced’ pedagogy at one South African university. The idea of emplacement draws on the careful incorporation of social space as a teaching tool within the social sciences, such that students can situate themselves as reflexive, embodied persons within concrete spaces and communities which carry particular social, economic and political histories. This paper draws on data from course evaluations and student assignments, as well as a description of course design, to argue that many of the benefits of careful emplacement in historical and contemporary context can happen even where students are never in the same physical spaces as one another or their lecturers.  This relies, however, on students’ having access to both the necessary technology and to an environment conducive to learning.